The story of our books: secrets, discovery and Subjection of Women

Interpretations below were written by the Portico Library volunteers as part of Bookends and Beginnings: Stories from our collections by our volunteers exhibition.

The Works of Henry Fielding, 1806 by Henry Fielding and Arthur Murphy 

“This 1806 volume of The Works of Henry Fielding is the oldest one held at any Manchester library. It consists of a compilation of several playbooks of dramas written by Fielding before he achieved fame with his Tom Jones novel (1749). 

In the face of his staunch opposition against Prime Minister Horace Walpole, the 1737 Licensing Act was passed, granting the government control and censorship rights over any works to be performed. As Fielding’s access to drama was closed, he turned to novels, writing  Joseph Andrews (1742), an ‘imitation in the manner of Cervantes’.

Here we have a romantic musical comedy written around 1728-9 which is key in Fielding’s transition between literary genres: Don Quixote in England, about Don Quixote and Sancho Panza’s adventures in this country. 

As a Portico researcher working on the reception of Spanish Literature in Manchester, Don Quixote in England is a meaningful item, not only for its role as cultural hinge between countries and genres, but also for its stance as a moral criticism of a corrupt government (plus ça change, right?). It’s also a very funny play!”

                                         Esther Gómez-Sierra 

Lady Audley’s Secret, 1862 by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

 “Published in 1862, Lady Audley’s Secret is one of the most compelling sensation novels of the nineteenth century. The novel plays on the anxieties about the Victorian domestic sphere and the invasion of the home by a villainess who masquerades as a seemingly ideal woman. Lady Audley is both the heroine and the transgressor, a “beautiful fiend”, playing the innocent woman to mask her criminality. 

Braddon’s novel mirrors events from the Constance Kent case in 1860, which gripped the nation. Kent was found guilty of murdering her brother in the family home and Kent can be seen in many of the female characters in the novel, including the titular Lady Audley.”

Amy Etherington

The Subjection of Women, 1869 by John Stuart Mill

“I chose the book The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill as the book was controversial for its time; promoting women's rights, the abolition of slavery and freedom of speech. Pages 96-97 as displayed show Mill's arguments for women receiving the right to vote. He presented the first mass women's suffrage petition to parliament in 1866, seven months before the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage was formed in 1867. 

Mill’s work was internationally influential, for example it inspired the American philosopher Noam Chomsky, who drew on Mill’s ideas of human development to write about ‘workers owning the capital with which they carry on their operations’. 

There is a small possibility that Mill visited the Portico in his lifetime, but we have yet to find him in our visitors’ books. However, it’s important to note that Mill’s work is a product of his time. Mill supported colonial activity and ‘civilising’ other nations, and his direct comparisons of women’s subjection with chattel slavery are questionable.”

Felicity Coan